Wizards of Arkania/Tropes
This is a list of tropes in Wizards of Arkania. Tropes * Animate Dead: The bread and butter of the Darkness school. * Anti-Magic: Several abilities reduce or outright negate the effects of magic. There are also a few spells that can do the same thing, mostly in Sorcery. * The Archmage: You, basically. * The Berserker: Anything with the Berserk ability, which allows them to sacrifice most of their defense for a massive attack boost. The Chaos spell Rage can give it to any unit, as well. * Black Magic: Darkness, the "evil" spell school. Consists mainly of Necromancy and a variety of debuffs while also having some of the best summons in the game. * Boring, but Practical: Basic units in general. They don't cost nearly as much to maintain, meaning you can pour more of your resources into production and research. ** The Magic Spirit spell you start the game with. It's a summoning spell that lets you summon, what else, a Magic Spirit. Said spirit's combat ability is subpar, but in the early game, it's going to be doing most of your exploring for you due to flying and having two speed rather than one. * Character Customization: If you don't want to use a pre-made wizard, you can build one from scratch. * Color-Coded Wizardry: Holy is yellow, Chaos is red, Sorcery is blue, Earth is green, and Darkness is purple. Arcane doesn't have a symbol, but its spells are generally shown as white. * Counter Attack: All units can do this, unless the opponent has the First Strike ability and kills them. * Crapsack World: Ainakra. It's incredibly magical, much more so than Arkania, and its races are all powerful to match. However, the monsters are horrifically deadly, there's a laundry list of awful Random Events, and if you start off there, you'll likely be competing with your game's strongest wizard first. * Curse: Lots of spells, mostly in Darkness (though Sorcery gets one or two). They generally follow the format of "resist or get X stat reduced until you make the resistance check". * Difficult, but Awesome: Sorcery in general. Its has very little raw power, relies on technical control, and requires a good understanding of the game's mechanics. However, a skilled Sorcery wizard can shut enemy spells down with ease while slowly picking them apart. * Eldritch Abomination: The Ancient Wraith, a high-level Sorcery summon. It looks like a floating black cloak with glowing yellow eyes. It floats around and attacks with Eye Beams. Oh, and when it dies, tentacles briefly pop out of its chest during the death animation. * Elemental Crafting: Standard equipment has no bonuses, Mithril equipment has +1, and Adamantine equipment has +2. * Elemental Embodiment: Three different summons. Fire for Chaos, Water for Sorcery, and Earth for, well, Earth. No air elementals, though. * Elemental Powers: Generally speaking, Holy gets light and life, Chaos gets fire and lightning, Sorcery gets ice and wind, Earth gets earth (duh) and nature, and Darkness gets darkness and death. * Elite Tweak: Basically the way to play. * Elves vs. Dwarves: Implied; Elves and Dwarves have below-average racial relations. (So do Drow and Dwarves, but Drow hate everybody.) * Enemy Exchange Program: Once you take down a city's defenses, you can either destroy or capture it. If you choose the latter, this happens. * Entropy and Chaos Magic: The Chaos school, focused mainly on sheer firepower with a few Random Effect Spells. * Fantastic Racism: An actual game mechanic. Depending on your starting race, the morale of other cities will rise or fall based on their race. Halflings generally have the best racial relations, while Drow have the worst. * Fire Balls: A staple Chaos spell. * Horse of a Different Color: Many races get a unique mount for their cavalry. Dwarves have giant lizards, Orcs have boars, Nomads have gryphons, etc. * Knight in Shining Armor: The strongest Human unit, powerful cavalry that can tear through opponents. * Massive Race Selection: Fifteen total. Let's go down the list: **All Trolls Are Different: Big, regenerating brutes mainly held back by poor research capability. **Beast Man: Gnolls, vicious hyena-men from Ainakra. They serve as the Ainakran equivalent of Orcs, a brutish and powerful race with a slight research handicap. **Draconic Humanoid: Dragonkin, an ancient and mysterious Ainakran race of dragon-men. **Hobbits: Halflings are the standard model, peaceful country types with surprisingly capable slingers. In a nod to Master of Magic, they also have the best relations with other races; every race is at least neutral to them, even Drow. **Humans Are Divided: There are actually three human races. ***Humans Are Average: Standard Humans are a high-tech Jack-Of-All-Stats race with all-around units and relations, defended by chivalrous Knight cavalry and skilled Halberdier foot soldiers. ***Amazon Brigade: Amazons, a more barbaric version of Humans focused on all-out offense. They get along fairly well with conquered races but have decidedly mediocre technology. ***Born in the Saddle: Nomads, essentially a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Mongols. Their early units are weak, but Magikarp Power gives them insanely good cavalry. **Lizard Folk: Lizardmen, low-tech barbarians from the swamps of Arkania. **Our Dwarves Are All The Same: Exactly what you'd expect–decent military power and fantastic magic items. About their only distinguishing feature is their lizard-riding cavalry. **Our Elves Are Better: Elves are the only Arkanian race that naturally generates mana, and their archers are deadly at long range. Their Ainakran cousins, the Drow, are even more magically powerful but have the worst racial relations in the game. **Our Gnomes Are Weirder: The Ainakran counterpart to Humans, a high-tech Jack-Of-All-Stats, but with extra magical power due to living in Ainakra. **Our Goblins Are Different: Actual goblins are just wandering monsters. Kobolds, however, are a playable race, emphasizing tactics and guerrilla warfare. **Our Orcs Are Different: Mixing elements of the Tolkenian and Blizzard archetypes. Their military strength and technology and good, though their research is slightly subpar. They're not well-liked by most other races, but they're not evil. **Snake People: Nagas, a highly militaristic race without the usual research penalties. * Our Monsters Are Different: ** Our Angels Are Different: A high-level Holy summon, extremely expensive but extremely powerful. There's also Archangels, which are even more so. ** Our Demons Are Different: Mirroring the Angels, they're a high-level Darkness summon with less individual power but more efficiency as a group. Demon Lords are similarly powerful. ** Our Dragons Are Different: Two Chaos summons, the Red Dragon and the Great Dragon, both of which can fly and attack with fire breath. ** Our Fairies Are Different: Both Sorcery and Earth get some kind of fey creature; the former Fairies, the latter Sprites. ** Our Gryphons Are Different: Gryphon Riders are the most powerful Nomad unit by far. * Power at a Price: Tons of Darkness spells. The most notable is Dark Sacrifice, which boosts Mana output for a short period of time in exchange for reducing the population of a city by 25%. You can probably guess why. * Religion Is Magic: The player can build temples to either good or evil gods; the former amp up your Holy spells, the latter your Darkness spells. Averted with Chaos, Sorcery, and Nature, which instead draw their power from magical nodes around the world. * Simple, Yet Awesome: Chaos. It relies almost completely on sheer brute force with no tactical subtlety, but it's so efficient and powerful that it doesn't matter. There's a reason it's consistently ranked among the most fun schools to play. * Summon Magic: A wide variety of spells across all five schools. Holy relies the least on them, Darkness the most. * White Magic: Holy, the "good" spell school. Lots of healing spells, buffs, and holy attacks that deal extra damage to demons and undead. However, it's generally expensive all around.